Last month I wrote a post about becoming a learning Jedi in less than 30 minutes. One of the points that I made in that post had to do with letting other people aggregate information for you, to make it easier for you to learn. This is the the most important way to learn online by letting others organize information to allow you to learn the most in the least amount of time.

In my first post I focused on the tool and the methods, in this post it is all about the people. I encourage you to scroll through and fellow, friend and subscribe to these folks as they are great sources of information.

Note: I am a marketing person, and so are many of the folks below, but even if you are not in marketing, you can still learn some great stuff from them!

24 People That Can Make You Smarter (in no certain order):

1. Amy Flanagan – Author of "The Shortest Blog In The World" – Sometimes more is less and Amy with her blog has mastered saying a lot with just a few words. One of my favorite posts of hers: "If our taxdollars are buying major equity in the country's largest financial institutions, does that make us "the man"?"  subscribe to her blog and follow her on twitter.
2. Marc Andreessen – Entrepreneur, Investor, Blogger, and a Multi-millionaire Software Engineer – Marc is famous in the technology industry but regardless of his fame he is brilliant. He is taking a break from his blog but promises to be back soon.  That doens't matter go back and read his old posts truly brilliant stuff.
3. Gary Vaynerchuk – Host of WLTV and Content Creating Machine – If you haven't yet heard of Gary, he does video podcast on wine and truly drops the knowledge.  He also has a personal site where he offers life and business advice. Gary is also very active on Twitter.
4. Wayne Sutton – Social Media Consultant – Wayne is everywhere online, not only does he co-host the Talk Social News podcast with me, he is also a tweeting, blogging, link sharing and video creating machine.  Because he is everywhere I recommend you visiting is social portal to follow him in all of his online activities.  I would recommend subscribing to his Ma.gnolia RSS feed to follow all of the links he is reading.
5. Jeremiah Owyang – Sr Analyst at Forrester Research: Social Computing - If you want to learn more about how people communicate on the web, especially companies then you need to follow Jeremiah's various streams of information: blog, twitter, and friendfeed.
6. Ryan Block – Editor and Technology Critic – Everyone needs gadget news and for that Ryan Block is one of the best.  Ryan is working on a new new consumer electronics site called gdgt, that is still in start up mode, but you should check him out on twitter and his weekly gdgt podcast. 
7. Louis Gray – Author Louisgray.com -Louis is a reading and writing machine just following him on friendfeed and reading his blog will make you vastly smarter about social media and online communications.  He is brilliant: go see what he has to say!
8. Anil Dash – Blogger and VP at Six Apart - What do you expect from a guy who works for a company that making blogging software? Anil has been blogging since 1999. I had the pleasure to meet him at Converge South and can honestly say he is one of the brightest people I have had the opportunity to speak with. You must read his blog and check out his tweets.
9. Tara (MissRogue) Hunt - Consultant and Author – Tara is not only a good marketer but also a great student and consumer of the web. Perhaps her best talent is her ability to share information through her blog, twitter, ma.gnolia and many many more places.Also listen to her speak with Wayne and I in the election week episode of Talk Social News.
10. Peter Shankman – Entrepreneur and Author – Probably the person from this list that most amazes me is Peter. His ability to seize on and create opportunities for himself is amazing, better than anyone I have ever seen.  That being said you can learn so much from Peter, I first recommend signing up for his e-mail list called "Help A Reporter Out" which will  give you free access to stories media professionals are working on, so that you can suggest yourself or someone you know as an interview source. Also check out his blog and twitter stream. 
11. Erin Kotecki Vest- Political Director and Election 08’ Producer for BlogHer.com – This former journalist and super mom is all over the Internet. She has interviewed Barack Obama and appeared on CNN. She creates a ton of content for the web including her personal blog, live video, and a never ending stream of tweets. 
12. Dave Snyder – Search and Social Media Strategist- It seems like search marketers are everywhere, some are smart others aren't, but for my money I would pick Dave Snyder as the guy I would call up to help me solve my search marketing problem. He is one of the best. David has forgotten more about search then most of us will probably ever know and that is why you can learn from him! Check out his blog which will lead you to all of the other sites he writes for and also be sure to check out his tweets. 
13. Marshall Kirkpatrick – Vice President of Content Development at ReadWriteWeb – Did you read a great blog post recently? It seems like so many of the great ones I read are from Marshall, I envy his ability to organize ideas and to explain information related to any subject. Without question he is one of the best writers out there. You can find his posts on ReadWriteWeb.
14. Tim Ferris – Author and Life Style Designer – Tim is just a bad ass. Don't you think you can learn something from a guy who only works 4 hours a week? Yeah I thought so.  His book The 4 Hour Workweek is a must read, but you should also check out his blog. 
15. Laura Fitton  aka Pistachio – Consultant – Pistachio is not only smart but seems to spend every waking moment online and because of this she is a content generating machine, like me she is a big twitter user, but also check out her blog. 
16. Jason Falls – Blogger and Social Media Marketer – The web is full of bullshit especially when it comes to marketing , no one is better at cutting through it and shooting it straight than Jason. Like Marshall, Jason is providing some of the best written and explained blog posts out there. His blog Social Media Explorer is great and from there you can connect with him on other social networks. 
17. Lee LeFever – Idea Guy Common Craft – Lee makes the best videos to explain well.. anything. The Plain English videos he produces for commoncraft.com are pure brilliance and can teach anyone. It is his ability to clearly and concisely explain anything that makes Lee someone to keep an eye on.  
18. Andy Lark – VP Global Marketing and Communications at Dell – I know this list is full of really smart people but Andy is one of the best when it comes to marketing, especially B2B. His blog is one that I have read for years now, one of the few I can say has lasted that long in my RSS reader.  The Daily Lark is good stuff check it out.  
19. Seth Godin – Author – I didn't want to include all "mainstream" folks on this list, but Seth Godin had to be included. Part of learning is being forced to think and explore your own values and ideas.  Seth serves as a catalyst for thought and that makes his writing very valuable to all of us. Sure you can buy his books, but his blog has a ton of great thoughts for free. 
20. Beth Katner – Social Media for Non Profits – I have long thought that social causes could be one of the biggest winners in a world using social media, especially crowdsourcing. Beth has emerged as the leader in helping non-profits understand this important issue. Her blog as well as her tweets offer new insights on the applications and practices of social media marketing. 
21. Byran Person – Blogger, Podcaster, and Event Organizer – A big part of learning online is taking that information and relationships offline. Byran started the Social Media Breakfast series and works to connect people offline. Is blog and podcast provide some good insight check them out. 
22. Rick Sanchez – Anchor CNN – Rick hosts the 3 p.m. show on CNN. Show why the hell is he on this list? He is a traditional journalist who understands the social web and is leveraging twitter to better cover news and increase his viewer ship.  By following his tweets you may just learn how journalism is evolving. 
23. Chris Brogan – Blogger and Cofounder of PodCamp – Chris is a 10 year veteran of using social media and technology
    to build digital relationships for businesses, organizations, and
    individuals. His is considered by many to be a thought leader and his blog is full of thought provoking stuff. I would also suggest checking out his rockstars page to find information about many other really smart folks.
24. Kol Tregaskes – Photographer and Content Filtering Machine – I honestly don't know much about Kol, but I recently came across is Friend Feed Stream and whoa! This guy can filter and share information. Even if you are not a Friend Feed user, I suggest subscribing to the RSS feed of his profile because he will do most of the learning and info gathering leg work for you. You can also check out his photography site.

So why stop at 24? Well I don't want to, but that is the number I picked when I started this post. I know we have many more brilliant folks out there. If you would like to suggest that someone be added to this list please leave a comment below and I will update this post. 

Damn! We have some brilliant people living here in the Raleigh-Durham area and Saturday’s BarCamp RDU was proof of that.  More than 200 people participated in nearly 50 sessions ranging in topics from "How to Accelerate Failure in a Start Up " to "Home and Landing Page Designs".

We all gathered at Red Hat the host of BarCampRDU for the past three years.

Though I had to leave early to spend time with family that was in town, I was able to sit in on some great sessions.  Here is what I learned:

Note: The number one lession from Saturday is that I have so much to learn and I need to work even harder to learn from others in this area.

Session 1: iPhone Application Development aka "NDA’s Suck"

Sadly one a the thing I learned on Saturday is that NDA’s suck, because of Apple’s NDA we were limted in what we could discuss regarding the iphone and its potiential as a mobile platform.  After we got past this conversation hurdle, we talked about the types of applications that would be powerful on the platform and obviously location based applications we a hot topic. Groups then broke off to talk about design, jail breaking, coca development and other iphone related topics.

Session 2: Twitter and Microblogging aka "The Lovers vs. The Haters"

93Ocatane lead a heated session and discussion about twitter, he made a point to invite both the lovers and the haters and both groups brought it.

"The Lovers" aguments:

• Twitter is easy to use
• Its mobile
• Facilitates offline meet ups
• With unfollow option you control the amount of "noise" in your twitter stream
• The API has leaded to rich third party tools
• Desktop and mobile Apps are key for a better experience
• Its a great information filter.
• Offers insight into people’s lives
• 140 characters makes you get to the point.

"The Haters" arguments:

• Its a waste of time
• Its unreliable
• Too basic, needs more features
• Too much noise and pointless tweets
• Not enough built in features
• Not enough space to write.

In addition to the lovers and haters throwdown, we also had some folks who discussed how they used twitter for internal company communication and how they were intergrating twitter into their businesses.

Session 3: Responsible Crowdsourcing aka "The Big Picture Session"

A small group of us gathered in a conference room to discuss crowdsourcing and its impact on business. This was by far the most interesting session from the stand point of a broad discussion with good specifc examples.  The basic theme of the discussion is how do you crowd source something and reward everyone in the crowd fairly vs just giving the reward to one person.

This was really interesting with some great examples. Here are a couple of great example of crowd ourcing is responsible and a win for all involved.

http://recaptcha.net/ – Did you know that the service that fight bots and spammers, uses you to help identify words that computers can not identify? True Story.

http://www.gwap.com – Some folks at Carnigie Mellon made crowdsourcing a game, you have fun and their computers get smarter.

http://www.namethis.com – A really cool site that uses the digg model to reward all participants in a crowd for creating company names.

I huge thanks to all that brought great insight to this session.

Session 4: RSS Tricks For Non Programers
We had a great session on RSS here as some tools that are useful and on some level free to help solve you RSS related issues.

http://feed.informer.com/ – Turn multiple feeds into a digest and much more!

http://www.aiderss.com/ – Helps reduce the noise from RSS feeds to leave only the news the reader wants.

I know that I forgot to include A LOT of other info, so please drop any additions in the comments.